Hearing different accents at home impacts language processing in infants

Infants raised in homes where they hear a single language, but spoken with different accents, recognize words dramatically differently at about 12 months of age than their age-matched peers exposed to little variation in accent, according to an expert in language development. The findings point to the importance of considering the effects of multiple accents when studying speech development and suggest that monolingual infants shouldn’t be viewed as a single group.